Hide Article Text (OCR)
In June of 1831, the need for a home for the elderly (and you were considered elderly pretty young then) the sick and families who were unable to support themselves or had no one to take care of them, was beginning to be felt in Butler County.This lea to the County Commissioners naming David Millikin, Jonathan Pierson and Caleb DeCamp as a committee to find a site for what was then known as an infirmary.The committee lost no time in choosing and purchasing 991-3 acres on a hill (later, somewhat cruelly, dubbed poorhouse hill), just east of Hamilton, overlooking the city, on what is now SR 129.The farm was purchased in 1831 — all 99 and 1-3acres of it— for $1,800 from Thomas Espy. .Plans for the building were drawn by James McBride, and Daniel Doty began construction in 1832.In 1835. Daniel Beaver was commissioned to build, for $900. a separate brick ‘madhouse’ on the farm for the mentally unbalanced, and I shudder to think what it must have been like to be shut up in it.There must have been a good many mental patients.for in 1R56, a larger stone building to house the ‘insane’ was built by William Van Hook. It was still standing in1919.In 1883, land around Hamilton must have become much more valuable, for it was propsed to sell the infirmary grounds and build a new building on cheaper land out near McGonigle. The voters to their credit, turned the proposition down overw helmingly, and the next year, D. W Gibbs Co., architects from Toledo, drew plans for the present County Home, and Fremann Compton was commissioned to build it.The farm used to be worked profitably with the help of the inmates, but there are not all that many there able to work now.Before Hughes Memorial Hospital was built there was a TB hospital at the Home. Understandably, it was not too good, through no fault of the management who had only the funds given them to work with.In later years, with Social Security and more prosperity enabling many to stay in their own homes or go to nursing homes, inmates decreased in number.With stricter State inspection rules, we found that we had neglected the building to a point where we had to do something to protect the inmates, and again the people of Butler County had compassion for its less affluent and helpless, and a new County Home is on the way.Hopefully, it will lend itself to the energy solution. The Commissioners have applied for a test pilot grant, and the plans will be such that it can convert to the long neglected source of energy — the sun — should we get the grant.
Newspaper Details
Union Liberty Journal
Hamilton, Ohio, US
Thu, Oct 02, 1975
Page 11
Full Page
Clipped by
Patrick M.
USA 16 Feb 2021
Other Publications Near Hamilton, Ohio
Hamilton Evening Democrat
Hamilton Daily Democrat
Hamilton Weekly Hamilton Telegraph
Daily Telegraph
Hamilton Guidon
